"As you already know, if I have to sit down in front of a computer, I want it to be running the Gnome desktop on Linux. I've watched it mature from a downright ugly, needlessly complex playground for geeks, to an attractive, simple interface that holds its own against commercial alternatives. And yet, every day I still encounter rough edges that make me think there aren't nearly enough folks out there hacking away at this stuff. I'd like to watch."Read more at PCWorld. Warning: While some of the author's gripes can be fixed by installing third party applications or plugins, or by tweaking Alsa etc, the point remains that his default distribution and/or Gnome did not come with these conveniences by default. Most people don't like tweaking stuff, they want things that "just work".

I thnk this is the point of the article. I know how do what you wrote, but users should have to "sudo a command from the terminal" to get a basic feature to work.

Brokent systems should be fixed by technician. A fix requiring the use of a terminal isn't any diffrent from a fix requireing a soldering iron... Fixing a computer isn't a part of what should be the user experience so there is no reason to implement a nice interface for it.

The problem is that it broke in the first place. The system should thus be tested before shiped.

To get this "basic feature" to work you need hardware (monitor, graphics card and cable) and software (driver) that supports EDID.

If you insist on building your own computer you should concider your self a techinician and we are back to soldering.

That would be a fine idea ... if PC's didn't sell for under $500.
Besides, finding a competent technician whose boss isn't crooked is almost impossible (at least around here). And even worse, finding a competent technician who knows what a kernel is; much less that Linux is a kernel and how to configure Linux.